Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

nicklevine.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 130 posts

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#111

Post by Annatar »

rjsw wrote: post #107
Annatar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would if I knew how; it sure wasn't for lack of my trying to do so, but I don't know enough to pull it off. By the way expecting that something be fixed by a non-specialist just because something is open source and expecting someone to sink their extremely valuable free time so someone could break and destroy that work again, well, that's not only despicable, it's extremely infuriating. All the more infuriating as…

If none of the core SBCL team use Solaris then they won't know that SBCL doesn't work on it. I'm sure that people will suggest things to try if you post details of what you have done to get it to build. Leave out words like "despicable" though. Your account info states that you want to work with the Solaris successor projects, debugging a complex application is a good way to learn more about an OS.

I've left as much information as I could, but nobody even bothered taking on the bug. The other bug was "fixed" but no information was provided on when it will be rolled into the next release, so that's not useful either, especially since Lisp cannot be built without a working Lisp first, which doesn't work now, so I've no way to test the fix.

Working on debugging C code and assembler is one thing, working on debugging Lisp another: I have to master Lisp first, but without working SBCL that's not possible and I'm not switching to an inferior OS just to master something I can't later on deploy on illumos / Solaris. I'd spend an inordinate amount of my free time for dubious gain, something I can no longer afford, so much so that I've stopped sinking my precious free time into computers. Why does software often fail to gain acceptance, respectively why does it become successful? Availability.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#112

Post by _ph_ »

Annatar wrote: post #102
_ph_ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have run a server software written in SBCL on Solaris for many years. In which sense is the Solaris support lacking?

SBCL goes straight into a debugger on i86pc and on sparc it just core dumps immediately. It cannot be built from source on either of those platforms.

Then this is a regression in newer SBCL versions.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#113

Post by rjsw »

Annatar wrote: post #111
rjsw wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If none of the core SBCL team use Solaris then they won't know that SBCL doesn't work on it. I'm sure that people will suggest things to try if you post details of what you have done to get it to build. Leave out words like "despicable" though. Your account info states that you want to work with the Solaris successor projects, debugging a complex application is a good way to learn more about an OS.

I've left as much information as I could, but nobody even bothered taking on the bug. The other bug was "fixed" but no information was provided on when it will be rolled into the next release, so that's not useful either, especially since Lisp cannot be built without a working Lisp first, which doesn't work now, so I've no way to test the fix. Working on debugging C code and assembler is one thing, working on debuggi…

There are regular SBCL releases, something that is fixed will appear in a month or less. If you don't have a working SBCL you can bootstrap it using CLISP or cross-compile from a different OS such as FreeBSD.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#114

Post by lispm »

Annatar wrote: post #111
rjsw wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If none of the core SBCL team use Solaris then they won't know that SBCL doesn't work on it. I'm sure that people will suggest things to try if you post details of what you have done to get it to build. Leave out words like "despicable" though. Your account info states that you want to work with the Solaris successor projects, debugging a complex application is a good way to learn more about an OS.

I've left as much information as I could, but nobody even bothered taking on the bug. The other bug was "fixed" but no information was provided on when it will be rolled into the next release, so that's not useful either, especially since Lisp cannot be built without a working Lisp first, which doesn't work now, so I've no way to test the fix. Working on debugging C code and assembler is one thing, working on debuggi…

> since Lisp cannot be built without a working Lisp first

That depends entirely on the Lisp implementation. Some implementations can do this easily.

SBCL supports using another CL implementation. One compiles SBCL with that other compiler and then in a next step this then can compile SBCL.

SBCL supports building with a few selected other implementations. For example I used recently a version of CLISP in the SBCL compilation process. That's described in the INSTALL documentation. CLISP is usually a bit more portable, since it is written in C and does not use a native code compiler.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#115

Post by Annatar »

lispm wrote: post #114
Annatar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've left as much information as I could, but nobody even bothered taking on the bug. The other bug was "fixed" but no information was provided on when it will be rolled into the next release, so that's not useful either, especially since Lisp cannot be built without a working Lisp first, which doesn't work now, so I've no way to test the fix. Working on debugging C code and assembler is one thing, working on debuggi…

> since Lisp cannot be built without a working Lisp first That depends entirely on the Lisp implementation. Some implementations can do this easily. SBCL supports using another CL implementation. One compiles SBCL with that other compiler and then in a next step this then can compile SBCL. SBCL supports building with a few selected other implementations. For example I used recently a version of CLISP in the SBCL comp…

SBCL documentation states that it can be built with another Lisp, but that is not true: I've tried with CCL and it failed spectacularly.

I couldn't find a working version of CLISP for Solaris 10 for sparc and i86pc.

Guys, I've built hundreds of packages for Solaris 10 on both sparc and i86pc the number of which can easily compete with the number of packages on "OpenCSW" and I'm telling you that SBCL is so broken on the operating system from which it came that it can no longer be built or run on it without the involvement of the core SBCL team. It needs serious attention.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#116

Post by Annatar »

rjsw wrote: post #113
Annatar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've left as much information as I could, but nobody even bothered taking on the bug. The other bug was "fixed" but no information was provided on when it will be rolled into the next release, so that's not useful either, especially since Lisp cannot be built without a working Lisp first, which doesn't work now, so I've no way to test the fix. Working on debugging C code and assembler is one thing, working on debuggi…

There are regular SBCL releases, something that is fixed will appear in a month or less. If you don't have a working SBCL you can bootstrap it using CLISP or cross-compile from a different OS such as FreeBSD.

CLISP doesn't work on Solaris either and I've no FreeBSD nor the spare time to figure out how to get it to work.

The only Lisp which works is CCL but when I tried to build SBCL with it, the build failed spectacularly.

I then went to use CCL but all the getopts examples are for SBCL and since I'm still learning Lisp I couldn't figure out how to make them work on CCL. So I'm busted.

Post scriptum: it's been around six months since I've opened those bug reports for i86pc and sparc and there are still no new releases:

http://www.sbcl.org/platform-table.html

I wouldn't have written what I have about SBCL and dismal support for Solaris if I hadn't tried to build, debug, package and research it and research throughly I did. As a professional engineer, the first thing I did was read all the documentation and all the INSTALL instructions I could find as well as any other documentation and bug reports I could locate using multiple search engines; the official documentation is very poor for such a big and serious project and in my opinion as an engineer, not very professional at all, especially when compared to corporate documentation efforts. This creates an additional hurdle for someone looking to master Lisp and do so using SBCL. Pity the two intense weeks of my spare time; what a waste of my life since I'm none the smarter or more knowledgeable for it.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#117

Post by Annatar »

_ph_ wrote: post #112
Annatar wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBCL goes straight into a debugger on i86pc and on sparc it just core dumps immediately. It cannot be built from source on either of those platforms.

Then this is a regression in newer SBCL versions.

That's exactly what I've been trying to say all along. It needs serious attention from the core SBCL team.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#118

Post by rjsw »

Annatar wrote: post #115
lispm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since Lisp cannot be built without a working Lisp first That depends entirely on the Lisp implementation. Some implementations can do this easily. SBCL supports using another CL implementation. One compiles SBCL with that other compiler and then in a next step this then can compile SBCL. SBCL supports building with a few selected other implementations. For example I used recently a version of CLISP in the SBCL comp…

SBCL documentation states that it can be built with another Lisp, but that is not true: I've tried with CCL and it failed spectacularly. I couldn't find a working version of CLISP for Solaris 10 for sparc and i86pc. Guys, I've built hundreds of packages for Solaris 10 on both sparc and i86pc the number of which can easily compete with the number of packages on "OpenCSW" and I'm telling you that SBCL is so broken on t…

CLISP should build from source, it seems to be getting built fine by Joyent pkgsrc bulk builds. Their build of SBCL is failing in C code [1], maybe a Solaris expert could fix this.

The usual reason that SBCL stops building is that something has changed in the OS.

[1] http://us-east.manta.joyent.com/pkgsrc/public/reports/upstre...

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#119

Post by rjsw »

Annatar wrote: post #116
rjsw wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are regular SBCL releases, something that is fixed will appear in a month or less. If you don't have a working SBCL you can bootstrap it using CLISP or cross-compile from a different OS such as FreeBSD.

CLISP doesn't work on Solaris either and I've no FreeBSD nor the spare time to figure out how to get it to work. The only Lisp which works is CCL but when I tried to build SBCL with it, the build failed spectacularly. I then went to use CCL but all the getopts examples are for SBCL and since I'm still learning Lisp I couldn't figure out how to make them work on CCL. So I'm busted. Post scriptum: it's been around six…

That platform table doesn't represent what will build, only which binary packages are on Sourceforge.

I'm running 1.5.4 on NetBSD/amd64 and can build it on i386, sparc, ppc, arm and arm64.

Re: In May 2009 O'Reilly agreed to publish a book about Common Lisp (2011)

#120

Post by Annatar »

rjsw wrote: post #119
Annatar wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CLISP doesn't work on Solaris either and I've no FreeBSD nor the spare time to figure out how to get it to work. The only Lisp which works is CCL but when I tried to build SBCL with it, the build failed spectacularly. I then went to use CCL but all the getopts examples are for SBCL and since I'm still learning Lisp I couldn't figure out how to make them work on CCL. So I'm busted. Post scriptum: it's been around six…

That platform table doesn't represent what will build, only which binary packages are on Sourceforge. I'm running 1.5.4 on NetBSD/amd64 and can build it on i386, sparc, ppc, arm and arm64.

NetBSD also happens to be a completely different operating system and pkgsrc is likely to contain NetBSD-specific patches.
Post reply on HN